As we begin the countdown to the Fourth of July, I think it’s worth assessing some of the reasons why the United States broke away from England. Oh sure, you can talk taxation, equal rights, whatever. But the real reason is that the Brits are willing to destroy the minds of their children for no good reason, and we realized that we had to protect our offspring.
The most recent example pertains to the British government recommending that schools not teach the “i before e except after c” rule.
The news article discusses the matter with dispassion, but the repercussions are potentially catastrophic. You don’t just take away one of the cornerstones of western education without severe consequences. Kids need direction. Kids need guidance. The children of my generation were lifted aloft by the sheer, sleek simplicity of this grammar rule; it gave us solace in dark times, and kept us from listening to The Smiths more than three hours a day. Why not just shower Britain’s schoolyards with booze, drugs, and porn while we’re at it?
And what reason do they give? “"The rule is not worth teaching because it doesn’t account for words like ‘sufficient,’ ‘veil’ and ‘their.’”
How did these guys survive as a world power all those years? Listen up, continent: things that are taught in school do not have be true at all. Was Columbus a great hero who was kind to Indians and played Chutes & Ladders with them while learning how to make cranberry sauce? Were our founding fathers a bunch of sensitive, colorblind emancipators? Was I Love Lucy actually funny? Of course not. But these lies--which are still taught to this day, in classrooms all across America--form the bedrock of our families, our community, and our society.
If we stop teaching this rule, we are threatening the very fabric of our nation. This may sound like an overblown statement--that such a small, incremental change to our children’s curriculum will wreak such havoc--but once you remove one pillar of moral integrity, many more will be sure to follow. This week, we will no longer care about “i before e, except after c"--next week, it will be grammatically acceptable to start sentences with a conjunction and end them with a preposition. And that’s the kind of world you should be very scared of.
Actually, if you learned all the verses, it’s “i before e, except after c, or when pronounced “eh”, as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh’”. That’s at least less of a lie. Whether it covers “their” and “veil” depends on your accent, I guess.
I think you’re getting carried away here. Ignoring the “i” and “e” rule won’t destroy the nation. On the other hand, misuse of the possessive apostrophe is leading us straight to Hell.
Oh I’m completely with you on this one, I can spell real good and I still use that rule.Oddly I’ve never noticed all the exceptions, guess those words aren’t the hard one. Oh and DO NOT get me started on apostrophes.
But I have more important things to discuss, namely: chutes and ladders. CHUTES? What happened to Snakes and Ladders? Is this one of your ornery American lets-just-change-things-for-the-hell-of-it things? Let me tell you, it was snakes and ladders in my day, and snakes and ladders it better damn well stay. You are making mock of what made the Empire great.
If this rule is no longer taught, then that one Charlie Brown movie will no longer make sense. I don’t know why more people aren’t concerned over this.
“Seize, sheik, protein, codeine, caffeine...”
That infernal Charlie Brown song is now stuck in my head!!
I agree with you, Greg. Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put!
What can you expect from people who spell “color” with a “u” and pronounce “advertisement” in a funny way?
i can’t to this day even read the word “conjunction” without singing that stupid schoolhouse rock song.